Hello friends! It's Kelly here today sharing a fun floral card using some of the beautiful new products from the latest release! When I set out to create my card for today, it was headed in a completely different direction that where it ended up! To begin, I used my large memory MISTI to stamp the gorgeous new flowers from the Heartfelt Thanks slimline stamp set. Now, this is made for slimline cards, but that doesn't mean it can't be used for A2 cards as well, like I'm showing today.

Once it was stamped onto a smaller panel, I used the coordinating Heartfelt Thanks slimline layering stencils. I chose Sweet Mustard, Marigold, and Clementine ink for the blooms and Fresh Pear and Olive for the leaves. Now, I had originally planned on this being the main panel for my card so I cut it using the Essentials: Stitched Rectangles, but in the end it didn't show, so you could omit that step. I DID, however, end up by using it on the plaid background which I will talk about in a bit.

Once I had the flower panel finished, I got to work on the large "lots of love" sentiment. I love these new sentiments because they have the "shadow" portion included! I chose to die cut the letters from black cardstock and the shadow piece out of white using the Lot of Love die set. I used liquid glue to adhere the letters.

My original plan was to use this large sentiment directly on the floral panel. I fussed with it a bit but decided it needed "something more" to ground it, or in other words, anchor it to the busy floral background. I decided to create a plaid background using the Diamond Plaid stencil set to serve as a hint of detail around the edge of the floral panel AND I could cut the middle portion out to create the anchor I needed for the sentiment. 

As you can see, that ISN'T what I ended up by doing! ha ha! I decided to create a larger window by using the Essentials: Pretty frames die set and using the plaid as the top layer and the flower layer to peek-a-boo through the opening, hence the title of my post: Reverse Backgrounds! This window was the perfect place to add that large sentiment with the "You deserve it all" portion tucked underneath. I love how this turned out, which was completely opposite of what I was originally going to do! I hope you get a chance to play around with some "reverse backgrounds" as well! My rule of thumb is to make sure you use scale to your advantage when choosing the flowers and pattern! I finished off this card with a few leaves from the Leafy Branch die. Thanks for joining me today!